SafeNet, today released highlights from its SafeNet Breach Level Index (BLI) report for the first quarter of 2014. According to the report, almost 200 million records were stolen, the equivalent of approximately 93,000 records stolen every hour, between January and March, marking an increase of 233% over the same time last year. Of the 254 data breaches that occurred during the quarter, only 1% were “secure breaches,” or breaches where strong encryption, key management, or authentication solutions protected the data from being used.

Some of the reports' highlight show that more than 254 data breaches were publicised, representing 200 million lost or stolen data records. South Korea took the top spot of all countries with four of the top five breaches worldwide and a loss of 158 million records across a variety of industries. This represents 79% of the total number of reported breached records worldwide. These four breaches included the Korea Credit Bureau, Korean Medical Association, Korea Telecom, and Naver, a major Korean search portal.

While the number of South Korean breached records was extremely high, the number of breach incidents in Asia Pacific as a whole accounted for only 7% of the total number of global breaches, dwarfed by the 78% (199 incidents) that occurred in North America and 13% in Europe.

The financial industry was hit hardest, accounting for 56% of all data records lost or stolen. However, it represented 14% of total breaches during the quarter.

About 20% of all records lost or stolen came from the technology industry, while retail represented just 1% of data records lost or stolen and 10% of all data breaches, even including the Sally Beauty Supply breach, which made major headlines.

Government and education breaches accounted for less than 1% of total records stolen and 23% of data breaches.

The white noise of data breach reporting makes every breach seem just as bad as the last, but this is certainly not the case. Some organisations are handling customer data responsibly, and others are not. Tools like the Breach Level Index can help companies and the public alike understand the actual severity of breaches on a graduated scale and distinguish between these two groups,” said Tsion Gonen, Chief Strategy Officer, SafeNet. “In differentiating between secure and insecure breaches, it’s important to look at which victims have protected their data with encryption to limit the damage from a breach and render the date unusable to